CW: sexuality, boundary violation, scatalogical
“Everyone should get to experience the camaraderie of gay men at least once in their life.”
This was the support my friend Amber offered when I shared with her that I would be attending a Tantra Retreat for Gay and Bisexual Men. I was talking to Amber about this because I felt shaky in the decision. I wasn’t unsure that I would go but I had a lot of uncertainty about why I was going.
In November I’d seen a post about the Triangle Gay Men’s Tantra Group and a little light went on within me that softly said “That. There’s something here for us, look into it.” I’d contacted one of the organizers and after a little back and forth had surprisingly landed on a 7-day immersion in Zipolite, Mexico as the point of exploration. After years of making peace with the feminine, I was feeling called to engage more deeply with the masculine.
This isn’t entirely new for me. I’ve been a seeker most of my adult life. After reading The Art of Happiness at 20 and realizing I didn’t feel remotely that good, my fate was sealed. So I had some trust in my instinct to attempt this even though I didn’t have a lot to go on in terms of why.
Men aren’t an entirely new territory to me. At age 10 I remember thinking if I was seeking a soulmate it seemed silly to immediately count out half the world’s population. I’ve had a few rounds of attraction with specific men throughout my life but nothing that ever developed a significant depth or physical connection. And actually leaning into this exploration had resurfaced the memory that my first playing-at-sex experience was with another boy somewhere in elementary school. Over several sleepovers we found ourselves repeatedly acting out a scene from Police Academy 3 until we were admonished about locked doors and the play stopped without discussion. So I wasn’t totally out of my depth but attending this retreat still felt like going from the kiddie pool to deep free diving to attend this workshop.
And this leads into the first stage of healing that started as I leaned into considering this workshop: bringing to light the stories I had unconsciously taken on about relating to men and then healing, altering, or discarding them accordingly. The following is a short list of the more poignant stories I encountered and got to work with even before setting foot on an airplane.
- I will be ostracized for trying something new with my sexuality. – This one was up hard in the beginning and it was scary to share with friends and colleagues and clients that this was something I was going to do. I didn’t have any rejecting experiences though and after a couple dozen of these conversations the fear simply faded. I’m clear that it’s a real possibility and at the same time I’m not bracing for it anymore.
- I won’t be gay enough or being somewhere in bi territory won’t be accepted by gay or straight culture. – I heard this story a lot growing up and the movie Chasing Amy felt very reinforcing of the reality some face. In the end I realized I’m trying to be emphatically authentically me, not fit into a box to be accepted, so this one kind of feel by the wayside on it’s own (and everyone ended up being super accepting and welcoming anyways).
- Straight women will be massively turned off if I’m anything other than full straight. – I have a vague memory of some comedian doing a bit about how no woman wants to come home and find her husband with another man. This one got turned on it’s head pretty rapidly as every woman I talked to was either super supportive or jumped straight to telling me how hot they thought men being with other men was.
- I can’t back out of the exploration if it turns out to be not my thing (The actual wording in my head was “I can’t get un-fucked in the ass.”). – This one is a bit more nuanced but also kind of futile. The reality is I can’t undo anything I’ve done from sexual relationships to the brand of cereal I buy. And the idea that I can’t decide out of something if it’s not for me has been disproven many times in my life. But still sexuality can be a particularly charged exploration so I got to sit with this story for a while too.
With all this stewing I also decided to onboard myself for the workshop by getting several one-on-one sessions with each of the instructors. This was a huge boon to processing, both to give myself a chance to feel them out and make sure I felt ok to be in a 7-day container with each of them and to give them a chance get some better sense of me since I was coming to this with plenty of prior tantra experience but no men’s tantra and in a place of questioning rather than certainty. While this pushed some buttons and meant my schedule felt overpacked for a bit, I think the sessions made a huge difference for my eventual experience in the retreat. The sessions creating comfort with both instructors and achieved some understandings of each other that we otherwise would have had to spend half the workshop building. I can also strongly recommend both Steve and Benji‘s work though for quite different and complimentary reasons.
Pre-Retreat
I arrived in Zipolite on the heels of a birthday party in New York. A dear friend had had a birthday weekend and in the course of that weekend my sense of belonging got turned inside out. I had an experience where my internalized story rewrote itself from “I don’t deserve to be here” to “I deserve to be here so bad it hurts”. The birthday boy cheered me on and then drove the point home by having a bunch of friends at the party reflect to me just how much of a difference my presence made to them and how I didn’t have to keep trying to belong. It was both deeply healing and also had drained my emotional tank. So when I arrived at my Airbnb with this gorgeous view of the ocean it struck me that I had a few days to just be with myself and drink in stillness before whatever madness would ensue at the retreat.
Over the few days leading up to the retreat I rested in a deeply allowing fashion. Yes, I was in Mexico for my first time. Yes, there was an ocean 50 feet away. Yes, there were a myriad number of “should’s” in my head about things I could be doing. And I thanked all of them and I opted to be rather than do. I followed the rhythms of my body, sleeping when it wanted sleep, swimming when it wanted buoyancy, sunning when it wanted sun. I ate only when I felt called to it and for those few days my system got quieter and quieter and I felt something in me begin to heal. There were trials with getting luggage to the retreat center, there was a slight maze to find the breakfast place I’d decided on trying, and it all slowly blended into a deeper calm than I’d let myself have in some time.
So when I rolled into the first afternoon of the retreat I was already deeply immersed in the primal rhythms of the sea, the sun, and the myriad little critters that went about their lives unconcerned with human territories. I was deep enough in the space that I was starting the retreat from a standpoint that maybe interacting with people was going to get in the way of what I was here to understand. This faded quickly as I got into the group rhythm but as I’m looking back on the experience it was also a pivotal moment in recognizing how much I could get out of just listening to the world around me at large.
Golden Nuggets
At this point I’m going to let go of the fully linear narrative because it’s hard to parse out the experience day by day. Instead I’ll offer an idea of one or two of the golden nuggets of wisdom or growth I experienced each day. I say this just also to note that each of these nuggets had a lot of support around them from the fellow students as well as the course and instructors.
Day 1 – What If…
The first night we did an exercise where we were given a bunch of pieces of paper and asked to write repeatedly from two prompts. “I am” followed by some way you perceive yourself or an archetype you embody and “I intend to” followed by something you intend for the week. The first few “I am”s were rather innocuous and unchallenging, “I am a healer”, etc. Then my mind pulled something darker “I am a doormat” and I had a choice to make. I could skip over the doormat and go on to the next more palatable thing I could write, or I could welcome the instinct and see where “doormat” took me. For the next few minutes I just let statements pour through my pen. I don’t remember what I wrote and I don’t think it matters. What did leave a lasting impression and shaping for the week though was the last card I wrote, unpredicted words that simply and complexly said “I intend to love all of it” and then compelled me to circle several times the “Love All”.
We also did an exercise called “What if” in which you were supposed to name what if possibilities for yourself then put on a posture like they’ve already happened and let the group experience you in that state. Admittedly, the exercise didn’t especially resonate with me but that night I woke up with the thought “What if I let the group run a train on me?”. If you’re not familiar with the term the essence would be what if I let everyone in the group penetrate me over the course of a single interaction. Kind of a 0 to 120 mph question and probably beyond my capacity but my mind offering up this question felt pertinent so I decided to let the idea sit and see what might be behind it. More on that in a few days.
Day 2 – So Much Love
We spent the morning working with Betty Martin’s Wheel of Consent. I’ve explored it a few times in past, but having the wheel done up in tape on the floor 10 feet wide leant itself to a deeper kinesthetic connection to the material. It’s a subtle nugget but I found my understanding deepening into embodiment and also found a well of grief for the times on the wheel when I’ve been accused of things on account of others’ triggers and had to accept not being seen in my presence.
The night’s practice was Ecstatic Body, working with sensation to stir and direct vitality in the system. In one of my pairings I was given a head scratcher tool and was using it on my receiving partner without any direct skin-to-skin contact. I was just doing my thing as best I could and the session seemed to go well but without an obvious charge to me. When we finished though my partner looked at me with a sense of awe and said “Oh my god. There was so much love…” I didn’t realize it at the time but this was the start of an increasing cascade through the week of men reflecting to me how much they saw in me and how much I seemed to be naturally offering throughout the retreat.
Day 3 – Weaving the Matrix
The morning’s big exercise was to connect as a pair with each man at the retreat and create space to check in, discuss the status of each connection, clear anything that was unsaid, and name the greater context that each individual connection was being influenced by. My first hit was surprise at how many people said they took note of my presence and way of being. The number of reflections of my loving presence grew. And then towards the end I started to notice a subtle trend of holding back. One man had been worried I might be bothered that he got a bit turned on in one of our pairings. Another wanted to get to know me more but feared burdening me with questions. The theme of holding back the last 5-20% of desire seemed pervasive and as I sat with that, my “what if” from the first night began to shift and clarify towards an intention.
By this time in the retreat I was no longer wanting to leave the center during the afternoon break. I took to hanging in the pool having delightful conversations with my compatriots. As we were reflecting on the morning’s exercise someone mentioned the sense of expansion they saw and felt in me. Almost together we came to the wording of “It’s like you’re(I’m) getting a bigger cup”. It was like completing a loop from years ago when I wrote this article.
Day 4 – ???
Tuesday night’s practice was prostate massage. This is a comfort zone for me because I have a lot of practice with presence, confidence, and steadiness as well as a better than average understanding of the anatomy. I’ll brag on myself and say I’ve been many female partner’s guide into anal play being pleasurable (a friend once labeled me an anal sherpa) so aside from the addition of a prostate this was going to be an easy space for me to embody. I was paired with a man who had expressed attraction to me earlier in the week and because I wanted room for integration after receiving I offered to give first. The session was great, I did awesome work and then a line got crossed. In the aftercare section of the session I was snuggling in to help him ground and without discussing he put his hand behind my head and pulled me in to kiss me. In a split-second decision I let my Healer archetype take the lead and allowed the kiss because it seemed pertinent to his experience. And in that moment a part of me splintered because I had specifically told this person I was in a deep exploration and feeling practically asexual at the time so I would be happy to continue getting to know each other but I wasn’t available for a physical connection. And in the way that shock can do, part of me froze up with this conundrum that had just occurred.
So with this subtle freeze and an uncertainty of how I wanted to meet this incident I submitted to receiving from this person. I requested external only work because that was the message I was getting from my body. Through the session multiple times I asked him to slow down or spread out his touch and he’d hear me and comply for 20-30 seconds and then go right back to the speed and directness he had been doing. I’m familiar with this complaint from clients about other bodyworkers who either ignore or barely meet a request before falling right back to their comfort zone but it had been a while time since I’d experienced this kind of lack of presence. After several rounds of asking and being only briefly met I found myself thinking “God damnit, is this going to be another non-attentive person that I have to defend myself from?”. I did some breathing and directing my energy, trying to lean into the resistance and finally as things started to move I found myself yelling “Stop!Stop!Stop!” and after he took hands off the charge finally started to move. What came through was a holding from a variety of times in my life when I felt threatened but couldn’t run. It was intense to the point where I ended up having to stand up and run circles around the room to burn through some of the charge. After this settled I could barely tolerate touch for the rest of the evening and retired to bed without much conversation.
Day 5 – Shame Monsters
On the morning of Day 5 the “what if” from the first night was coalescing into a resonant idea. My first Tantra teacher talks about her highest calling being to be a Lover. While this has rung true and lovely to me in an academic sense I hadn’t truly felt that calling before. But as I mulled over the holding back I felt from the group during the Matrix exercise I feel like I got a hit of why I had been called to this group. There was plenty I was getting out of the experience but I started to feel that I’d been led to this group to help support opening to a next level of freedom. So the idea coalesced into planning for the next day’s free time that I would simply offer myself to the group as a Lover. I would sit for 3 hours in the classroom and simply be there to hold space for anyone who wanted to come and receive from me. The prompt to the receivers would come from the previous week’s birthday boy “What is your deepest, juiciest desire in this moment?”. It was a revelatory idea to feel into, both exciting and scary in the ways it brought me to question my own capacity.
The morning’s session focused around shame and sharing what we’ve held back. I’ve been working with a mantra around these ideas for the last year or so “What am I trying not to feel?”. I’ve gotten a lot of mileage of out that question and it’s evoked a lot of growth and change in my internal landscape. So this was a space where I think I approached the exercise differently from some of my classmates. I didn’t find big stories to uncover but rather spun through the smaller failures and misses of the last year. What I found in this exercise was “Honoring the pause”. Where it’s easy to keep verbally spinning out a story I started noticing with more nuance the places where I could pause my words, feel what was present, and experience movement of the emotions faster and easier. I also got to be the person to break the ice for the group when it came to sharing times when we’d been the source of shame. I told the story of unintentionally coercing an ex into sex and then the distress we both experienced and talked through with each other afterwards. I talked about how our honest discussion clarified that the the experience wounded both of us and helped us both see where we could repair ourselves to avoid breaks like that happening in the future. After my share stories started to pour from the group and I got to witness my brothers deeply expressing their vulnerability and pain. Benji mentioned that often someone becomes the conduit for the group, a foreshadowing that I’ll be more aware of in the future.
There was a beautifully simple meditation at lunch where shrimp was served. They hadn’t been deveined so I sat slowly splitting the backs then removing the vein and got to show someone else how to do the same. I got several reflections of how my intentionality around food affected people watching. Then after lunch I shared some story and learning techniques with a classmate who said that shared experience had just made the whole week worthwhile for him.
The final exercise of the evening was titled Energetic Fucking. In essence this is sex but engaging with energetic intention rather than physical. I’ve done a decent amount of this with women but hadn’t ever tried it with a man. I was fortunate to be paired with one of the professionals in class, a super lovely and loving man who I’d connected with prior to the retreat. We started with me mostly receiving which went well although it took a little more attention than I’d like. No complaints, just an awareness that it was pushing my growth edges. Like an skill, directing my energy takes some focus for me to maintain engagement and awareness when I’m leaning into something new. Having a skilled and patient partner was really helpful for dropping into a deeper level of receiving and reciprocity.
When we switched and he lay down I found myself being called to offer something special. I had watched all the care this man moved through the retreat with, all the spaces he’d offered support and something was calling me to make sure he was feeling as much or more care back. I slowed down, put on an energy that said “I’m in charge now” and climbed on top. Past this I honestly feel like I dropped into a deeply instinctive space where time dilated and we emerged with something intense having occurred but only soft impressions of what had ensued. What was clear was that something big had moved for my partner. He looked at me like his heart was bursting and said “I don’t know how to hold this much love.”. I’d had multiple times this week where someone said something to me that needed a special response. So I trusted my instinct and let my mind go soft. The words that came out in response were “Don’t try to hold it. Let yourself be a river overflowing it’s banks and piece by piece let the flood waters erode your banks until the riverbed widens and widens.”.
Day 6 – Being vs Doing
Around midnight I awoke with a very urgent need to poop. I took just a little too long locating my portable bidet sprayer in the dark and I missed the gate, getting a bit on the floor and a streak on my calf before I got to the toilet. In a curious way cleaning this up became a devotional and an act of gratitude. I amused myself thinking I could also tell my partner who’d had something similar happen in Peru that now she wasn’t the only one to have pooped on herself in Latin America. At this point I was unsuspecting of what was to come, probably the most significant GI clearing I’ve experienced in my life. Over the next 16 hours I was probably to the bathroom every 15-20 minutes with diarrhea and one early massive bout of vomiting. What I also woke up with as I nursed my body through the night was various play-throughs of what it would sound like to confront the man who had forcibly kissed me a few nights earlier.
That morning we were given the opportunity to close out anything that was left unfinished with anyone. I took this person aside and told him I no longer was interested in any connection with him at this time. I let myself feel my anger as I told him about the number of times he’d made things about him rather than getting to know me and where I felt treated as an object rather than a person. I also put it to him that I’d now become the conduit for the group’s abuse conversations yesterday and had spent the night shitting my brains out because of it. I let myself seethe and then I did my best to walk away and let it go. After I returned home a friend I was telling this story to would asked if this experience had ruined my trip or soured the whole thing. I took a beat and realized that not at all, in fact the push to take a stand for myself had made this whole chapter deeply empowering and overall felt like a positive experience. I also got some self reflections of ways shadow aspects might have influenced this ordeal and a clear sense that bringing things to light rather than punishing felt like the way forward to healing.
I muddled through the rest of the morning weaving my way from bathroom to class to bathroom again. I let the group take care of me with food, meds, words of encouragement etc. I made it past lunch and got a nap which was enough to get me to 60-80% for the evening. I mentioned this to someone going into the final big session and was told “I’m pretty sure your 50% would still be pretty damn good.”. We did 4 rotations of giving in various forms. Each turn felt more poetic and meaningful as we rotated and then I landed with a friend for the final rotation. He had a simple but specific request, just attention to two places and said he’d asked everyone else to touch him there so far. The tone of his request seemed almost a little pleading to me like noone had fully met him in his ask. So for 20 or more minutes I just cradled his head and touched him where he asked to be. For 40% of this time it felt like nothing happened, and I expect this is where other rotations may have fallen off, but I chose to just keep staying with him where he asked, cycling out briefly when an edge called for attention and then back to his request. It felt like nothing might move and I just stayed with it. I again feel like I blacked out some but in the final few minutes something moved. I don’t remember what was said or done after the session, I just remember the look of relief on my partner’s face and the softening of someone who had just been unburdened.
Day 7 – Serendipity On The Stairs
The final morning of the retreat came to a soft close with a series of staggered goodbyes and poolside conversations. I was briefly tempted to go into town or to the beach but opted for discretion as the better part of valor and continued to rest from the previous day’s ordeal. I made one small excursion halfway down the hill to buy some backyard Mezcal as a medicinal anchor of the trip to take home. Otherwise I shuffled towards packing and dipped between bed and the pool for most of the afternoon. I also took note of the comings and goings of the staff and other retreat center guests as our group began to dwindle and a group of French Canadians began arriving for a yoga retreat.
I have spent years of my life being in motion to move things forward and it was a lovely space to just be still and let the world move around me. Food and medicines showed up from the group including surprising banana types that I’d never tried before and something subtle felt like it was settling into a deeper alignment.
After a day of ease I was headed to my room around 8pm to pack with an intention of getting up at 5:30am to share a cab to the airport 1-2 hours away depending on road construction. As I was starting to descend the stairs to my room one of the women from the next retreat was ascending. I said hi and asked something seemingly innocuous like “how are you doing?” and she burst. I don’t remember exactly what was said but three things stood out: she was overheating and couldn’t get her body temperature to regulate, her mind was churning incessantly, and she was wondering if she could even functionally be there and if she should just go home. I made a flash decision and softly asked if she wanted support. She said yes so I directed her up to the yoga platform and got her laying down on the cool tile with a fan blowing on her.
I’ve always tried to maintain an adaptability about my body mechanics when I work and this session I was well served by my adaptive capacity. I lay belly down on the floor and cradled her head and neck to start unwinding some of the torques there. As we made progress I felt her system start to relax and she began offering more information about traumas that had occurred the last time in Mexico and some broader context of how much was stirred up for her. I continued to listen and in bits and pieces she started to shake. Being familiar with somatic release I kept steady space for her and continued to let the waves of shaking grow, gently encouraging her to lean into it but not force anything. I didn’t track our timing but just road the waves of release with her and when things finally settled it was 10pm. She asked what that was that just happened and I found myself a bit at a loss for words, not wanting to diminish the session by trying to break it down into techniques or modalities. I also had a feeling that this process wasn’t over for her but also awareness that there’s only so much the body can take on in one sitting. In all this time we hadn’t exchanged names and we finally did as we decided to exchange names and numbers for further support. She also requested a final hug before I left in the morning which I was happy to offer if she was up.
I walked back down to my room to find the lights off and my roommate asleep. So I set my alarm earlier for 5:15am to be able to get up with time to pack. Around midnight my roommate and I were both up for the bathroom and he said he’d probably not get back to sleep for an hour so I was free to turn on the light and get most of my packing done which was much appreciated to not have to wake up early and scramble to pack. I spent a half hour or so getting my luggage situated and then lay down to get another hour or two of sleep.
After a few more hours of sleep I got up for the bathroom around 3/3:30am and as I was in the stall I heard another person come out of their room for the bathroom as well. I think I coughed and after a short pause heard:
“Jason?”
“Yeah”
“Can I ask for more help?”
“Of course. Thank you for asking”
“Ok, let me go get dressed”
And with that, we found ourselves back up on the platform at 3:30am for another hour and a half.
The second session was beautiful and seemed gentler on her system this time. Stories poured out of her nearly the entire time we were working and by the end I was mostly holding craniosacral type space for her and deeply listening. It’s hard to remember the details of the session but I was clear on wanting to give her a gift before I left. With less than an hour to sleep before my cab we said our goodnights and I fell into a deep liminal space until the alarm.
As I was gathering my things, the woman I met on the stairs came out to give me a hug before I left and the feeling of her body was like she had come home. After our embrace I handed her the stack of post-it notes I had written the first night and promised to send her an explanation that evening when I got home. We said our heartfelt goodbyes and my roommate and I joyously hopped in our cab to the airport.
The travel home was smooth yet potent. As our car wound through the Oaxacan roads to Huatulco I felt myself settling into medicine space. My roommate and I would fly to Mexico City then part ways and I would fly home just ahead of an ice storm hitting my home town. It was really joyous to be supported by a new friend who could hear me in my weird like when I came back from the airplane bathroom saying it had felt like I could feel the slipstream of the jet moving outside the tail of the plane when I went to the bathroom. I was ahead of schedule getting into Atlanta so I got on standby to get home earlier and arrived home just as the ice was starting to sprinkle.
After I landed home I sent a note to my partner-in-healing from the night before thanking her for the beauty of the time and space we’d shared. I told her the story of how I’d written the cards and offered that it felt important to share as a waypoint to acknowledge that we’re all in this together and all of us have our beauties and challenges. As she’d shared some of her challenges with me the night before, I wanted to share some of mine with her in solidarity. We had a quick exchange agreeing that the two of us felt like we had created a handoff experience, transmitting the healing field my group had generated to support and carry momentum through to the group she was about to embark upon. We decided to take some quiet space while she dropped into her experience but with an intention to reconnect somewhere on the other side. Content and warm while the ice rained down, I drifted off to sleep.
Aftermath
The day after I arrived home had turned into a work day but the ice storm scrubbed that possibility. After I finished canceling with clients I proceeded to alternately nap and watch shows through the day (shoutout to I Like Me, the John Candy docummentary and The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry). I started writing this post within the first day and took 12 days to complete it. The aftermath of the retreat continues to swirl and it’s hard to come up with a post-retreat timeline so I’ll again do a list of Golden Nuggets of what has been alive for me since
- My entire body feels softer. I started noticing it on the flights home after Mexico City that my skin felt softer, my facial features feel softer and my hair feels softer. My body also feels lighter and not just in the way that feels more significant than just the15 lbs my weight dropped over the last 3 weeks.
- I bought myself flowers from a close friend who started her floral business, Comfy Florals, a few years ago. I love that I can give Kristy an emotional tone to the arrangement with some bits of story around the why and then sit back and watch a friend weave her magic, reveling in the way it enlivens my life rather than calling me to competition.
- Sights, sounds, and tastes have been brighter. The Miss Vickie’s sea salt potato chips on the plane ride home felt like a revelation and all of my senses have felt sharper in general.
- I’m coming home with an overall deeper sense of brotherhood with my fellow men from the retreat. I have no idea how or when further contact will happen but if I never see anyone from the retreat again I still feel a deep sense of belonging that transcends the personal and feels tapped into a collective sense of belonging, like it’s an energy that I’m both receiving and transmitting simultaneously.
- I’m experiencing a lot of churn in sleep, not abnormal for me when there’s a few snow days but also it seems more than that, like I’m dreaming in small lessons. I dreamt myself as a bodhisattva, a label several folks have applied to me in the last year or so. I’ve dreamt completions of conversations and starts of new ideas. I sometimes feel like I’m having other people’s dreams but since I’ve been home they’ve all felt like mine.
- I’m yelling at traffic more and flipping people off. In times when I’m opening up to healthier pathways for anger, the car has often been one of the places the shifting balances shows first. And whether this is something true or something I am projecting there has been a higher than usual incidence of people tailgating me unnecessarily on the highway since I’ve been home.
- I feel more grounded in my needs and I’m finding it quicker than usual for me to decide what my next move is in a thing. I grew up prone to 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th guessing myself and while I am still inclined to game options, I am spending far less time spinning my wheels and finding it far easier to pick the direction that I can best gauged and take forwarding steps towards that intention. I can also hold peaceful space with the parts of me that want to churn and spin, honoring their contributions without necessarily giving them the wheel.
- I’ve broken off several relationships that have become unbalanced. It hurts and I am, at times, deep in the grief of relationships which ran past their ability to meet me fully or prioritized peace over authenticity, primarily at my expense. And I get to sit with the pain and savor the grief of loss while also recognizing that every time I have shed skins that are no longer spacious enough for me, I have ended up meeting better suited and brighter beings who are able to walk further along the path with me than those I had to let go of.
- Toroidal shapes seem to be playing a role for me in my current growth cycle. I don’t have clarity on what that roll is yet but I’m noticing that the shape showed up at the birthday party, a few times during the retreat, and with my craniosacral therapist a few days later. I just get to live into the mystery of that one.
- One of my brothers at the end of the retreat used the not-uncommon wording of “back to the real world”. I gently cautioned against delineating worlds like that as it can make it harder to carry lessons across threshholds. And reflecting that to my friend helped clarify how little distinction I see these days between the potential of healing fields and the potential of the broader world (and beyond).
- I’ve been sitting with what first felt like a renewed sense of purpose but has been evolving into something more freeing. One of the later lines from The Shawshank Redemption has been quietly circling in my head, “Andy Dufresne who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean.” And as I’m writing this I’m recognizing the feeling of being let out of confinement (by myself) that is continuing to spool out as I process and expand from the retreat.
The final stage of the “becoming a Rolfer” process for me landed in finding an office and building a practice to the point where saying “I’m a Rolfer” felt natural rather than new and weird. I landed at 
Monday came on fairly bright and early. The legendary 
Tuesday came on bright and early with a trip down to 
Wednesday night saw me up early for the last session of my 3-series trading with Neal. The session with Heather had given me a few ideas of spots to work on and Neal incorporated that info nicely into a nice wrap-up session for our work together.
By this point in the week it was beginning to feel like a rather intense, though worthwhile, haul through a lack of sleep. It wasn’t really intentional, just between the work with Heather and Neal I think we’d reached a sort of critical mass where some of the body shifts were interrupting my sleep for a bit.
Graduation Day!
The last day in Boulder dawned a bit earlier than I would have liked, but with a 1pm flight to catch, an hour+ bus ride to get there, and the unpredictability of the lines at DEN, I decided it would be best to be up at out early. I had hoped to take my host to Snooze and to get myself a flight of fancy pancakes (still a brilliant idea) but by the time we arrived at 8:30 the wait was nearly an hour and would have been pushing it on my comfort zone with the time.
Monday came bright and early with a promise of the final movement session for the 13 series clients. This puts us firmly into the territory where both clients are past the core sessions and moving into integration and closure. As a big proponent of movement it’s been nice watching the students shift from sort of loose understanding of how to build a movement session to a much more confident assessment and directing of the sessions with their clients. This was also Ray McCall’s last day in class assessing Neal who passed the test just fine.
Today was my final session with my demo client for the 10 series. It finished up in lovely fashion and I’m really happy with the work I did. That said, it’s also a little bittersweet finishing up with someone who’s been really fun to work with and a great reciprocal learning relationship for my first assist. It’s also going to be curious as I will be starting Thursday with a new post-10 client who I’ll see for 3 sessions. Having watched how it can be really challenging to have someone visit a student towards the end of a training I figure it will be curious to be trying to integrate a new relationship on the tail end of a long series of learning already.
Today I met my post-10 series client for the first time. I was still dragging pretty badly from the day before and feeling like I wasn’t going to do very well working with her in the morning. By the time she came in and we got to work though I had found my groove again inside of about 15 minutes. It was particularly nice to feel less constrained to the 10-series and a bit more free to work as needed. I do of course still love the 10-series for what it is, but in the teaching context there’s a certain feeling of pressure to do work in a specific context. Getting back to working with an already Rolfed body was a nice change and I think the session came together really well. For their post-10 series work, most of the students are working on each other which also adds a nice looser vibe to the room at the end of the day.
I woke up this morning to a text from my intended hiking buddy saying she hadn’t been able to get to bed until after 3am and would be in no shape to go hiking that morning. Not to be deterred, I set out for breakfast followed by a short but satisfying hike up and down the Dakota Ridge trail at Sanitas Valley.
Saturday morning I had intended on hiking up Lion’s Lair trail on the west side of Mount Sanitas with some friends, but due to a miscommunication it didn’t work out, so we decided to punt and go Sunday instead. Not to be put off getting some outdoor time in, I took another spin around Sanitas Valley and Dakota Ridge solo then headed over for round 2 lunch at Wayne’s Smoke Shack this time going for chicken, sausage, and peach cobbler. Then I grabbed a couple pounds of brisket to go and headed up to Neal’s for a class party.
At the end of the day, Ray came up to me and asked who I did my movement training with. When I responded that it was predominantly Monica Caspari and Lael Keen and asked why, he said it showed in how I approached students and gave feedback and that I clearly moved from my center and expressed out through my limbs. I took that validation and compliment gladly then went out to Kakes studio for the Monday night classes and dance with 
Tuesday was session 8 with my 10-series client. Ray was not observing this day so I got to head into the integration sessions of the series without the extra observation. After some hemming and hawing and discussing, I ended up going with client’s desire to try radial decompression for the 8/9 part of her series. It felt like a little bit of a risk since traditionally it’s an upper and lower session, but the session ended up being helpful to have demo’d for the students, several of whom had been nudged to do radial decompression sessions in their Unit 2 despite never having seen a RD session.
Session 7 for the Monday/Wednesday clients today. There’s nothing quite like watching a room of Rolfers pulling on gloves and putting fingers in mouths and up noses. It seemed to be a pretty significant session for Neal’s and several other clients and was a particularly interesting day to sit with and hold space for.
Last day of classes for the week and this time I was doing my client’s session 9 with Ray observing in addition to the class. Given that a new person would change the dynamic of the room a bit, I made sure to introduce my client to Ray outside before anything got going; all the same it was interesting watching how the extra observer affected both mine and my client’s nerves a bit. Fortunately, she and I have been building a nice sort of teamwork effort all along the way and we could lean on that a bit to keep her session moving in awesome directions (including a nice ‘wink wink’ type, “you’re doing such a great job today” comment from my client). I asked Ray for feedback afterwards and he said it was a great advanced type session but maybe to find ways to pull it back a bit if I’m going to teach further. I expect if I continue to teach that that sort of balancing act between client needs and abilities and student needs and abilities will be a long-term project.
On the advice of some dancer friends, I got up semi-early on Friday and headed out to hike up to
The first party, and source of today’s photo, was for my nephew who was turning 1. It was a struggle getting over there and settling in at first but once I got to talking with family for a bit it turned out to be a really lovely time. This trip has been fairly short on family time due to the constraints of not having a car at first and lots of energy just going into learning my role in the classroom so it was nice to have most of the nearby family gathered to hang out and catch up for a bit. The birthday boy was clearly enamored with the cake and I ended up staying a lot longer than expected with the evening’s finale being taking both my niece and nephew for a bunny spotting walk around the neighborhood.
Sunday saw another hike, this time up the Flatirons trails, not too far from but significantly easier than the Royal Arch hike I had done on Friday. It was again wonderful just being out in nature, being sociable, and also getting to spend a bit of non-dance time with the dancers I’m getting to know or connect with again and who I’ll have to say goodbye to all too soon.
Today was Labor Day and thankfully and enjoyably a day off. This made for the final day of a nice 4-day weekend and a good chance to unwind and sort of take stock for me. I spent the morning relaxing, checking in with some dance friends, and getting some more ideas of how to get more connected with Boulder again. While it had been great to have 4 days off I also hadn’t planned a lot of activity for it and ended up feeling a bit cut off from people.
Tuesday was session 6 (back line) with my client. As I had walked in to class today the mural above had caught my eye. This mural sits across from the Rolf Institute and while it spans the whole building, the “Your smile matters” part had grabbed my attention this morning. I’m not sure what to share about it other than to say that smiling has been one of those things I felt I had to force for a long time and this year has been a brilliant space of finding ways to have it start coming back naturally. Thanks to the mural for reminding me that it is a powerful and valuable thing to have back too. 🙂
Wednesday seemed to be a day with a feeling of divergence. Students had their session 4 (inner line of the leg) with one of their clients while having just finished session 6 with their other client the previous day. It had also been a week since they had seen this client and most recently had done movement sessions with them. While it doesn’t seem like much, that week break is the longest any of the clients will have gone without getting work during the course of this series. And something about the further shifting placement of sessions between the two clients helps to nudge that feeling of “this is going to be real work soon” since clients in a practice situation are rarely coming in on the same session on the same day (though it is fun when the stars align and all your sessions one day seem to have the same theme).
Thursday morning saw me early into the office for another run around the lake which happened to include running into this delightful sign. Today was session 7 (head, neck, mouth, nose) with my demo client which is probably most often the weirdest session of the series to most people. It ended up being a great session but one where the time got away from me a little bit and I was relieved to find that my client didn’t have to start work until slightly later than usual so we had time to get her out the door without creating a problem.
Friday was a class day today since we had our whole week shifted by a day on account of Labor Day. So it was a day that demanded less work from me since Neal was demoing today, but we had a lively conversation about trauma and how to work with it in the morning.
WEEKEND TIME!!! This morning started with sleeping in followed by barely making it up in time to go meet a new dance friend and her boyfriend for brunch. Bagels from Moe’s Bagels were the order of the day and man they had a lovely home. He’s an architect who has lived in Boulder for 60+ years and designed and built several of the homes on the block, culminating in the current home which was just incredibly beautiful. It was a fun and interesting sort of reminder of what that sort of commitment to one place might allow for as I’m currently wondering how much longer I might remain in the Triangle. Following brunch we took a nice easy hike around the foothills area and then I headed home for the afternoon.
Took my time heading home after a leisurely fancy Mexican lunch at Leña and a trip through what a colleague had described as Denver’s fanciest Goodwill. After getting home I ended up taking an extended nap that lasted from something like 3:30-7:30. I woke up hungry and decided to go for a walk to find dinner. After a few Google Maps searches I finally landed on going to Snarfburger which is an offshoot of Snarf’s, my to-date favorite sandwich shop chain in Boulder. Incidentally it appears that Snarfburger is located in the spot where Daddy Bruce’s Barbecue used to be.
First day getting to drive into class instead of taking the bus. While I had arranged to rent a compact car, the rental agency saw fit to upgrade me after a 5 hour extra wait to get a vehicle at all. So for the upcoming month I had a Jeep Renegade to drive around town. First day or two driving it were a little nervous being that I’m unused to the shape of it; but at the same time it seems like another potential step forward in terms of getting used to standing in the full width of my body (something I’ve been working with for the past few years ever since 
Session 4 demo day for me today. Session 4 remains a curiosity for me in terms of trust. For those of you not familiar, session 4 in the Rolfing 10-series works the muscles of the inner leg and thigh up to the pelvic floor and hips. It’s the first time in the series that you start really digging into territory that many people have never had touched therapeutically and it still amazes me sometimes how clients will trust me to work in odd areas after having only known me for a few hours of direct contact.
Another grey day for my session 5 with my client. Got into some really rich territory and I’m feeling very grateful for having a client who’s down for the whole multi-faceted journey of the 10-series. It’s interesting to find myself leading someone else through some of the changes I went through as a Rolfer® and sort of evoking the idea that to help others as fully as possible you also get to be open to the work changing you as a practitioner as well.
Not a great deal to report for this Friday. I was riding pretty high off of doing two really fun demo sessions and feeling like we had some solid rapport going with the students. I sort of semi-snoozed through part of the day then took myself out to see 
Saturday morning I decided to take a hike up the trails around 
Deer in the yard across the street from where I am staying this morning. Today was a little exploration and a lot of chill time. Took a drive down the foothills to Golden, CO and Denver. Took an afternoon nap and did some reading on student papers that need to be done by Tuesday.
Monday was my first chance to watch Neal do a demo session following my not-so-great first session on Thursday. I’d spent the weekend occasionally mulling over what I could recall from past demo sessions but wasn’t coming up with much that I could say for sure. So today I finally got to get fresh eyes on a demo session with the intent to learn for myself about demoing instead of working and I picked up as much as I could, particularly on how and when the quiet spaces came into play.
Tuesday I finally got to redeem myself. After the 5 days between my first and second demo session, we got to get into session 2. This time I was prepared a little differently and my client and I had already discussed a few ways to alter my approach that seemed like they’d serve everybody. So a few deep breaths and dive in to the session with a focus on recovering and getting momentum going in a good direction. Thankfully, it worked!
Kind of a grey and overcast day today, really the first one since I’ve been here. Nothing particularly substantial to report for this day. I’m starting to feel comfortable in the rhythm of wake up, get to class, do class things, go home, relax and sleep, next day. I booked a car rental today for most of the remaining time I’ll be there, which feels like it should open up some new possibilities. Much as I’m enjoying class, I do find as I settle in a bit I’m starting to want for some time to do things other than just bouncing between the Rolf Institute and home.
Took a house-sitting gig for the weekend looking after a friend’s dogs (and chickens, and butterball cat) while she and her husband are out of town. I’d set my car pick-up to be 10:30 this morning so I could get over and have an early day, but instead they told me when I got there that I couldn’t pick it up until 4. So a few hours of napping and running errands filled my day until I was able to pick up the car and drive out to Lafayette and meet up with the pups. Nothing particularly challenging or intriguing about today, just handling stuff, getting a car (definitely a relief), and then hanging out with these two for the rest of the evening.
Got down to Westminster today to see my sister and my niece and nephew. After being unsurprisingly woken up early by the dogs I got breakfast, took them for a walk around the lake, then headed over to my sister’s. We hung out for a bit, took the kids to the park, flew kites, etc. and this was my first time getting to meet the younger of the two. Spent some time minding the kids (mostly watching 
Got up early on Day 1 of the training to meet Neal at Lucile’s down near Pearl Street Mall. Lucile’s holds a special little spot in my heart for doing grits pretty damn well so far from home. I didn’t actually find it until I was almost done with either my Unit 1 or 2 training, I can’t recall at this point.
On Day 2, the class was complete. One student had been delayed returning from a wedding over the weekend and didn’t make it in until Tuesday. So we had postponed setting up the class altar until that morning. There were a lot of strong ideas and emotions fit onto this small space and Neal and I were both a bit surprised by how intense the setting up was. My contributions were my now requisite class offering of 
Today’s picture was taken out at a coffee shop as I waited for my client to show up for a meeting before class started. Our first session would be the next day but because she wasn’t available in the evening, I had offered to meet her for coffee in the morning to talk about the work ahead and any questions she had. I had thought about asking how she’d feel getting a photo together but honestly was so in flow talking to her that the thought didn’t even occur to me until after I’d headed to class.
Had my first client demo session today. I think so far I’d been feeling like there was a sort of beginner’s luck going with the class. Good instructor who I seem to get along with, a young but mature class all of whom seem really solid in their skills, and my demo client seemed like a great candidate for being a class model. However, that luck took a stumble on my first demo as I talked WAY more than necessary. After finishing my demo and receiving that feedback from basically everyone in class I was… a bit downtrodden, but mostly fine with it. All-in-all a recoverable mistake and it’s been a good misstep to chew on the rest of the week in terms of how I’d communicate this aspect differently to someone else doing a demo for the first time.
Friday morning came earlier than I would have liked with a 10:30 (I know, boo-hoo, so early /sarcasm) appointment for a session with Jim Asher. One of my goals to make the most of this trip is to get some work from some of the master Rolfers in the Boulder area. I’d seen Jim do a demo working with a child at one of the annual meetings but otherwise had no exposure to his work. At this point I’m not going for aches and pains but for optimizing mechanics, continuing to open more freedom in my movement, and just to keep learning about the work experientially. I don’t know how to encapsulate the session well at this point other than to say it continues to amaze me how much power I find in the touch of practitioners who’ve been Rolfing longer than I’ve been alive. It both gives me something to aspire to and gives me something to be awfully patient with as I expect there’s just no substitute for time and practice to achieve those sorts of levels.
Day 6 took me back to the Rolf Institute for lunch with Thomas Walker, my original Unit 2 instructor. Thomas was in town to teach a workshop and sticking around through next week for a faculty meeting. While I’m not in a huge rush to assist again, I did want to get on his radar about being available down the line and we talked some shop around the new course series he’s teaching which I had taken part in last summer.
Noting that I had failed to pack a few obvious staples like a water bottle, umbrella, or any shoes that weren’t sandals, it seemed like Sunday was going to be a good day to take stock and restock. I had come out with some intention of restocking my wardrobe from the vintage stores of Boulder and Denver and it occurred to me I might as well go a step further and get some gear like a new pair of hiking boots since the pair I’d had since Boy Scouts had bit the dust a few years back. So a few errands later, I had some new gear and a pair of hiking boots on order with REI since they didn’t have my size in stock.
Jason Sager 